Japanese language, a language isolate and one of the world’s major languages, ranking ninth in terms of the number of speakers with more than 125 million. It is primarily spoken throughout the Japanese archipelago; there are also some 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and their descendants living abroad, mainly in North and South America, who have varying degrees of proficiency in Japanese. Since the mid-20th century, no nation other than Japan has used Japanese as a first or a second language.

General considerations

Hypotheses of genetic affiliation

Japanese is the only major language whose genetic affiliation is not known. The hypothesis ... (100 of 4,339 words)